But the Roman Catholic Church, the French government and several professors said churches were, above all, a symbol of France, much like other iconic French milieus attacked by the Islamic militants, who also reject secular life.
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He is one of 112 people placed under house arrest out of the 286 taken into custody to date for terrorist-related activities.
France was still deep in mourning over the massacre when two men stormed into a church in the northern town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray during morning mass Tuesday and slit the 86-year-old priest’s throat at the altar before being gunned down by police. Her husband was then slashed in four places by the attackers and is now hospitalized with serious injuries.
One of the two attackers was identified as French jihadist Adel Kermiche, who was awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag.
Dalil Boubakeur, the head of France’s Muslim community described the attack as a “blasphemous sacrilege which goes against all the teachings of our religion”.
A police officer stands guard at the Saint-Etienne church on July 27 that was the center of an attack blamed on ISIS in which its elderly priest was killed.
The identity of the second attacker has not been made public.
“This is a super anonymous place”, said Moustapha Doucene, a neighbour of Kermiche, adding he expected terror attacks “in the big cities”.
Yet even as they spoke, more horrifying details of the church attack became known.
Islamic State have released a video of the two “soldiers” responsible for murdering a French Priest. The family alerted authorities to his radicalism to try to stop him from going to Syria, the friend said.
The attack is the third in two weeks in France and Germany in which jihadists have pledged allegiance to the group, increasing jitters in Europe over young, often unstable men being lured by IS propaganda and calls to carry out attacks in their home countries. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a statement that Pope Francis expressed his “pain and horror for this absurd violence, with the strongest condemnation for every form of hatred and prayer for those affected”.
According to French President Francois Hollande, the attackers claimed they were acting on behalf of ISIS, something the group also claimed via an affiliated news agency.
Defense Minister Jean Yves Le Drian said the 10,000-member Sentinelle military force- deployed after an attack in January 2015-would be spread out more in areas outside Paris.
The Riviera city of Cannes, just down the coast from Nice, banned sunseekers from bringing large bags to the beach “which could hide… weapons or explosive substances”.
The government, already under pressure after the Nice attack, faced more questions over security weaknesses after it emerged Kermiche was known to anti-terror investigators.
One of four people taken hostage suffered severe knife wounds, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
He was sent back to France and detained until late March this year when he was released on bail.
“Those who drape themselves in the finery of religion to hide their deadly project, those who tell us of a God of death, a Moloch (false god) who rejoices in the death of man and promises heaven to those that kill by invoking him”.
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France woke up to another terrorist attack in a small town in Normandy on Tuesday, but attention is now focusing on one of the two assailants of the brutal assault. “Where are the police?”.
